Congress granted the HHS permission to move pandemic-related money between accounts, though the agreement stipulated the agency had to give lawmakers a heads up. Former Office of Management and Director Russ Vought defended the decision and said "we would do it again," telling Stat that not only did the administration have the authority, it was also "the right thing to do in order to move as quickly as possible because lives were on the line." Other Trump officials seemed to agree, per Stat, arguing that successful vaccines would reduce hospitalizations, making Warp Speed the more consequential outlet.
Senators Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) on Tuesday pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray on the procedures federal law enforcement officials have used to track down those who participated in the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. โI'm anxious to see those who committed unlawful, violent acts on January 6 brought to justice,โ Lee said during a Senate Judiciary Hearing on Tuesday. The Utah Republican explained that he had โheard a number of accountsโ of people who were in Washington, D.C. on January 6 who never went near the Capitol but were โinexplicablyโ contacted by FBI agents who knew of their presence in the district that day โwith no other explanation, perhaps, other than the use of geolocation data.โ
No hate crimes were reported this year so far. According to Yam, the 2,800 hate incidents collected by watchdog Stop AAPI Hate over five months last year โweren't necessarily hate crimesโ as they included โless severe, yet insidious, forms of discrimination. Citing experts, the piece acknowledged the rise in โanti-Asian sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic but warns against labeling incidents without evaluating individually.
A group of Democratic senators is urging President Joe Biden to support recurring direct payments to lower-income Americans, arguing that regular, additional cash assistance is necessary until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn. The proposal โ which likely would face an uphill climb to become law even if gained wide support within the Democratic Party โ would build on the means-tested, one-time $1,400 stimulus check included in Biden's coronavirus relief bill, which passed the House last week and is now under consideration in the Senate. The senators, who also requested Biden support automatic unemployment insurance extensions, said they would like the president to include the ideas in a future economic recovery bill.
Authorities are investigating whether human smuggling was involved after a crash Tuesday involving an SUV packed with 25 people and a tractor-trailer that left 13 people dead and bodies strewn across a roadway near the U.S. Mexico border. When police arrived, some of the passengers were trying to crawl out of the crumpled 1997 Ford Expedition while others were wandering around the fields. The rig's front end was pushed into the SUV's left side and two empty trailers were jackknifed behind it.
MyPillow's outspoken Trump-supporting chief executive was censored during an interview at CPAC โ an event branded โAmerica Uncanceledโ โ after he launched into conspiracy theories linking the coronavirus vaccine with the devil. Mike Lindell was speaking on Sunday to Liz Willis, the host of conservative YouTube channel Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), when he delivered a somewhat meandering set of conspiracy theories relating to the pandemic, the presidential election and Israel. โIn Israel right now, from the prime minister on down, we don't know what happened, but obviously, he congratulated Biden, but after that, we got a little suspect,โ Mr Lindell said during the segment that was edited out by RSBN on their YouTube channel.
China's policy of transferring hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to new jobs often far from home is leading to a thinning out of their populations, according to a high-level Chinese study seen by the BBC. The government denies that it is attempting to alter the demographics of its far-western region and says the job transfers are designed to raise incomes and alleviate chronic rural unemployment and poverty. But our evidence suggests that - alongside the re-education camps built across Xinjiang in recent years - the policy involves a high risk of coercion and is similarly designed to assimilate minorities by changing their lifestyles and thinking.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed confidence on Tuesday that President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will pass in the Senate this week, saying the Senate will take up the legislation as early as Wednesday. The Senate is using the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, which limits time for debate and allows legislation to pass with a simple majority. Schumer spoke to reporters after Mr. Biden addressed Democratic senators virtually during their caucus lunch.
At the White House COVID-19 response team briefing on Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky expressed concern about a leveling off of the decline in weekly coronavirus cases.
The Supreme Court confronted the growing partisan divide over voting rights Tuesday in an Arizona case in which Democrats are challenging two Republican-sponsored rules that appeared likely to win approval from the justices. One rule calls for throwing out ballots cast by voters who arrive at the wrong precinct on election day but insist on voting there anyway. Both of Arizona's rules were in effect during last year's election, when President Biden narrowly defeated then-President Trump and when the previously Republican-leaning state elected two Democrats to the Senate.
The military veteran announced his campaign on social media as Georgia Democrats aim to oust the freshman representative. Sgt. Marcus Flowers has announced his official campaign against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her seat in Georgia's 14th Congressional district. In his newly released campaign video shared on social media, the military veteran laid out his case as a Democratic candidate.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans has advised Catholics against receiving the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, calling the one-dose shot โmorally compromised. In a statement Friday, the religious organization said the new vaccine should be avoided due to its link to an โabortion-derived cell lineโ used in the vaccine's development and production phases. But the available vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are โmorally acceptable,โ the archdiocese wrote, because only some lab testing utilized stem cells from aborted fetuses, making their connection to abortion โextremely remote.
The FBI arrested a notorious white supremacist livestreamer in an early morning raid in Florida on Tuesday. FBI agents, working with Fort Lauderdale police and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, arrested Paul N. Miller, 32, on one charge of being a โconvicted felon in possession of a firearm.โ The FBI said in a press release that Miller was arrested without incident.
What happened to Neera Tanden is racist, and we can't ignore how that influenced the White House's decision Tuesday to pull her nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Tanden's confirmation failure makes her the first of President Joe Biden's picks to be disqualified. It's no coincidence that she also happens to be an Asian American woman.
Progressive Democrats introduced a measure Tuesday to give incarcerated people the right to vote. The amendment, to major voting rights legislation, failed by a 93-278 vote. A majority of Democrats also voted against it.
The archdiocese of New Orleans, as well as Roman Catholic leaders in St Louis, Missouri, have told local Catholics to avoid the Johnson & Johnson's single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, because its early development used โmorally compromised cell lines created from two abortionsโ. The leadership in New Orleans said two other vaccines in use in the US, made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, were acceptable despite having been developed with โsome lab testing that utilised the abortion-derived cell lineโ. The archdiocese made the announcement on Friday.
Luke Dufrene said he saw something disturbing as he was driving to work Thursday evening. The 23-year-old Lockport, Louisiana, man said he was on his commute when he saw the driver of a vehicle "dropping a baby off" on the median of a highway. "I looked back and he took off leaving the child there, so I flipped a U-turn in the grass to get to the baby,โ Dufrene said.
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And while Mr Biden has kept Mr Trump's policy in place to send new migrants back to Mexico due to concerns about Covid spread, the new president has already begun rolling back other Trump-era policies that hardened the border against refugees and other migrants seeking opportunities or safe haven in the US. The Biden administration has ended Mr Trump's so-called Remain in Mexico programme that forced more than 70,000 asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while their cases wound their way through immigration courts. Thousands of those enrollees have now crossed into the US under the Biden administration's supervision.
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz drew national ire after he attempted to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, but according to a new poll from Morning Consult, his overall job approval from Texans was hurt far more when he vacationed in Cancรบn during a winter storm that left much of Texas without power or water for days. According to polling conducted between February 18-28, Cruz's net approval rating dropped from +6 to -5 in the weeks following his Cancรบn excursion. A net approval rating is calculated by subtracting the share of disapproving Texan voters from the share of voters that approve of Cruz.
Fitness brand CrossFit, a staple of Marjorie Taylor Greene's political brand, is distancing from the Republican. A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company is against Greene's conspiracy theories. CrossFit's statement comes after the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments.
The Duchess of Sussex wore earrings during a royal tour which were a gift from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia who is accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Chopard earrings worn by the Duchess at a formal dinner in Fiji in October 2018 during a royal tour of New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga were a wedding gift from the crown prince according to The Times. Kensington Palace was reportedly instructed to brief the media that the chandelier earrings were โborrowedโ and this was reported by outlets covering the engagement.
In a press conference on Monday, Middletown Police Chief David Birk said Brittany Gosney, 29, confessed to killing young James, but he said the motive was still unclear. According to the report, which was provided to The Daily Beast by the Preble County Sheriff's Office, Gosney told cops she drove Hamilton's 2005 Dodge Caravan to a local park on Feb. 27, where she tried to ditch James and her other kids, ages 7 and 9. โBrittany stated she had planned to get the kids out of the vehicle and to leave them behind as Hamilton had been pressuring her to get rid of the kids,โ it says.
Merrick Garland could be confirmed as the next US attorney general as early as this week, after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination for consideration before the full chamber by a bipartisan 15-7 vote. Mr Garland has breezed through his nomination process with the Senate Democratic majority controlling committee gavels. The longtime DC Circuit Court judge's ascent to the top spot in Justice Department leadership has been welcomed by Democrats and even some Republicans as a welcome change from the tumult of the Donald Trump years.
A top US general says that the evacuation of US troops at a military base in Iraq before an Iranian ballistic missile attack last year was carefully planned so that Iran would not know that roughly half the troops on base had moved out, but at least one expert says the story is a bit questionable. On Jan. 8, 2020, just days after then-President Donald Trump ordered the airstrike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian military fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq hosting US and coalition troops, specifically Al Asad and Irbil.
โHow about we skip โhe wonโt winโ cycle and not do 2016 all over again. Trump can absolutely win another presidential election.โ
โWith independents deserting him, there is simply no path for Trump to get back into the White House โ except as a tourist.โ
โThey might as well cancel the 2024 primaries...because there is no way he can lose.โ
โThe next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump โ whether or not he decides to run again.โ
โDonald Trump will not be running for president again. He will, however, continue to tease the possibility of a 2024 run.โ